Raetsonwe Redundant and unnecessary.

Rijndri Load of rubbish!!

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Josephina Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

lyrast I just finished watching "The Toll of the Sea" for the first time. What a beautiful and moving film! Anna May Wong was perfect in her "Butterfly "role as Lotus Flower. She was so beautiful and had such wonderful expressiveness in her face, eyes, movements, gestures. It was a performance that mesmerised me, that touched me profoundly. And she was only a teenager when she made that film! In the end, the other characters are really only supporting props for her portrayal of a deeply wounded and utterly sacrificial love for a shallow husband and sweet child. The supporting actors do their jobs effectively but it is Lotus Blossom we care for most. To think that this gem was thought lost! This is the first time I've seen an entire silent film using The two-strip Technicolor technique. I've only seen clips from "The Black Pirate", the sequences in "Ben Hur" and the Exodus episode from "The Ten Commandments". I found its use in "The Toll of the Sea" very effective, particularly in conveying an ambiance of the exotic in the film and adding lustre and richness to the settings. I haven't thought too much about the personal emotional impact it may have on the viewer. When I watch the film again I'll try to analyse this factor.The piano score has a very nice delicacy which underlines the feelings and reactions of the various characters. I thought it quite sensitive and telling.An utterly beautiful film!

crossbow0106 This 1922 film is apparently the first feature length film ever made in color, which alone makes it worth watching. It stars the beautiful, incomparable Anna May Wong, who was 17 at the time. She already shows remarkable maturity as an actress. The story unfolds when Lotus Flower discovers a Caucasian man floating in the sea and enlists help to save him. They fall in love and get married. Does the love last? This film is very dramatic, and it lasts under one hour. The story is told simply, with interesting twists in the tale. The film was thought lost for years until it was found, with the ending needing to be re shot. See it for the historical, pioneering aspect of it. But, most important, see it for the great performance of Anna May Wong. This movie cements the brilliant and varied versatility that she had as an actress.

theowinthrop In continuing its month of Chinese American cinema, Turner Classic Movies showed THE TOLL OF THE SEA tonight (which night highlighted some of the work of Anna May Wong. The Chinese-American actress was as big a star as Sessue Hayakawa was in the silent and early talkie periods, and certainly had much going for her: not only an ability to have the motion picture camera "love her" face and motions, but a sexiness that could easily be turned on. But she had problems finding leading parts, and usually had to accept better-than-average supporting roles (usually as a villainous - see the Sherlock Holmes film, A STUDY IN SCARLET with Reginald Owen for an example). Her best recalled role to most people is the young Chinese bride headed to the hinterland to meet her husband to be, who is the subject of the sexual desires of war lord Warner Oland in SHANGHAI EXPRESS. It was a good performance under a master director (Von Sternberg), and one of the few times Marlene Dietrich had competition from a female actress in one of Dietrich's films.This role was Anna's break-out part. Written for the screen by Frances Marion, the fabled great woman's screenplay writer in the early film period, it was also the first full length color film using a new two color strip system. Anna plays Lotus Flower, a naive young lady who helps rescue a drowning man named Allan Carver (Kenneth Harlan). Carver, while recovering, finds himself falling for Lotus Flower and he woos her. Then he gets word from home that he has to return. So he shows that fatal weakness in character that the screenplay makes us expect: he's talked by friends into dropping Lotus by not talking her back to the U.S. with him. She has been hoping to go with him, but now has to beat back disappointment. Still she feels she can count on Allan, as they have gone through some type of ceremony of marriage in China (although it is one that Americans might not accept). So she expects Allan will return.Years pass. Lotus was pregnant by Allan, and now has a four year old son (Priscilla "Baby" Moran plays the little boy). To him she keeps saying that one day his daddy will come home to them. But he doesn't. Then Allan shows up with his American (i.e. Caucasian) bride "Elsie" (Beatrice Bently). Lotus gives him up in a civilized manner, but then also gives up her son to be raised by Elsie and Allan. Then she commits suicide by throwing herself into the sea at the base of her garden.The reader may believe this is a rip-off by Frances Marion of the play and later opera MADAME BUTTERFLY. All missing is the heroine blindfolding her son, putting an American flag in his hand, and committing hara-kiri (but Anna is playing a Chinese, not a Japanese). Also this is a silent film with no bars of Puccini in it. But they have the next best thing, complete with a suicide. On the positive part the film has Wong acting with dignity and sweetness as a young girl who believes too much in romance and her lover's honor. She is constantly seen trying to keep her idea of his memory alive, despite the nay-sayers around her (personified by two catty gossips played by Etta Ling and Ming Young). She tries desperately to retain her optimism, and prays that her lover returns. But we are told that the sea is unforgiving, and for every instance of happiness it produces it demands repayment that is heavy and cruel. Like the sea waves it causes the person's euphoria to rise higher and higher, and then hit troughs pulling it lower and lower. Certainly the film keeps this idea in our mind. What will happen to our heroine and her son?The film as we have it now only has about 90 to 90% of the original in it. The last five minutes were lost, and had to be re-shot with a similar two tone color strip film and camera. But we see from a design in one of the last dialog cards shows a picture of Lotus Flower in the water sinking (only her head is above water. So we know how it ends.For all the similarity of the film to the opera, THE TOLL OF THE SEA is well photographed and Anna May Wong shows a nice chemistry with the motion film camera. The other actors are competent (the best being the two catty scolds who keep warning and laughing at Lotus Flower). Kenneth Harlan is not a bad actor but he oddly reminds me of Oscar Shaw, the Broadway "juvenile" star of the 1920s who played with Mary Eaton on Broadway, and appeared opposite the Marx Brothers in THE COCONUTS. The resemblance is quite odd. The actress who played his American wife was pleasant - nothing more. The little "boy" (Miss Moran) is enjoyably sweet as the child, and makes the slow torment Lotus Flower goes through all the worse to the audience.But it is really Wong who makes the story work - she is fully aware that she is unfairly being pushed out of a relationship that she thought would last forever. Her youth makes it more poignant. In the end we can understand why her career would last as long as it did, and why she became America's first Chinese - American film star.

Snow Leopard This movie would be interesting historically if for no other reason than to see its pioneering use of the two-strip Technicolor, which still looks good over 80 years later. It's also well worth seeing to watch Anna May Wong in an early starring role, when she was still a teenager.The story takes the "Madame Butterfly" plot and changes it slightly, setting it in China and adding some emphasis on the role of the sea. The story is simple, yet potentially packed with emotion, with its themes of clash between cultures and broken promises in relationships. Much of this particular production seems understandably to have been devoted to ways of showing off the potential of its new color process, and as a result there are times when the visual is emphasized over the dramatic potential.Wong, as you would expect, is quite good in her role. She looks quite young, with plenty of youthful innocence instead of the full degree of elegance that characterized her later roles. But she already had the ability to use the smallest of expressions and gestures to express her character's emotions economically and convincingly.The rest of the production (other than Wong and the color process) is merely solid for the time. Kenneth Harlan rarely shows much energy as Carver, although fortunately it often works positively in bringing out his character's spineless nature.The basic story makes some powerful statements about relationships and cultures, and thanks to Wong, much of that comes through. It does miss a few opportunities, but it hits more than it misses, and the combination of Wong plus the chance to see what early Technicolor looked like is more than enough to recommend "The Toll of the Sea" to any silent movie fan.